Today’s Motto: ‘Hope is often designed to prevent us from seeing reality’

This is Your Day-TODAY: Take a Determined Step Forward and Make History!

On this day, Oct. 29…….

1851 – British Indian Association was established in Bengal with Radha Kanta Dev as president and Devendranath Tagore as the Secretary (pic from National Archives).

1872 – The all-metal windmill was patented.

1945 – The first ball point pen in the U.S. went on sale at Gimbels Department.

1947 – A forest fire at Concord was drenched with rain produced by seeding cumulus clouds with dry ice, the first such event in the U.S. The rain-making planes were flown over the burning area by seeders. The experimental mission was a joint weather research programme of the U.S. Army Signal Corps and the Office of Naval Research. However, natural rainfall followed, caused by natural conditions, so it was not possible to measure the artificial rainfall.

1960 – Muhammad Ali’s 1st professional boxing fight; beats Tunney Hunsaker in 6. A great Boxer of his times,

won 56 contests in his career and later turned to American politics. Died of Parkinson disease at the age of 74.

1988 – China announces a herbal male contraceptive.

2004 – Arabic news network, Al Jazeera broadcasts an excerpt from a video of Osama bin Laden in which the terrorist leader first admits direct responsibility for the September 11, 2001 attacks.

2015 – China announces the end of their one-child policy after 35 years.

2019 – 1.5 million people without power in California as utility company turns power off to try and avoid sparking more wildfires.

2019 -Rising seas could endanger 150 million people worldwide, three times more than previously thought, according study by Climate Central published in “Nature Communications”.

Born….

1981 – Reema Sen, Bengal and Bollywood actor. She’s the grand daughter of legendary actress Suchitra Sen (pic credit-BollywoodMDB).

1985 – Vijender Singh, middleweight boxer who won several Asian, Commonwealth championships. He won Bronze medal at Beijing Olympics in 2008. He also fought Lok Sabha election from South Delhi in 2019 on INC ticket but lost.

Lest we forget….

Napoleon was a military genius and one of the finest commanders in world history. He fought 60 battles lasting 23 years, losing only eight.

Having successfully battled against enemies of the French revolution, in 1799 he staged a coup and five years later became the emperor.

In 1812, against all advice, he made the mistake of invading Russia. Ignoring history 130 years later Adolf Hitler did the same. Results were catastrophic for both dictators. After the major battle of Borodino, just outside Moscow, Napoleon was to record in his diary, “The French showed themselves to be worthy of victory, but the Russians showed themselves worthy of being invincible.”

But Napoleon was not just a soldier. The ideas that underpin our modern world – meritocracy, equality before the law, property rights, religious toleration, modern secular education, sound finances, and so on – were championed, consolidated, codified and geographically extended by Napoléon. To these added a rational and efficient administration (pic credit-PBS).

You may have known….

Saddam Hussein’s 2002 campaign anthem was a cover of Whitney Houston’s “I will always love you”.

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{Compiled by Lt. Gen. (R) Raj Kadyan}